The statue of the Confederate general came down Friday afternoon (May 19) against a backdrop of partly cloudy skies and a throng of New Orleans residents who cheered and sang as a crane popped Lee off the column. They sung "Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye" and "We Shall Overcome" before a crew that worked throughout the day pulled the statue from its Doric marble column and lowered it to the ground.

The Lee monument was by far the most challenging of the four monuments the City Council voted to remove in December 2015, when a 6-1 vote declared the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow era monuments nuisances. Starting April 24, following a federal court ruling, Landrieu began executing the takedown that became one of the most controversial mayoral initiatives in recent memory.